Finding Love on the Prairies

Dating in Mortlach

By Ntawnis Piapot

At the end of Main Street Moose Jaw is the Capone Hideout Hotel. Hang a right and you’ll come across Champs Nightclub. A typical club with a dance floor, a wooden bar and posters advertising the next UFC fight. It’s where you want to be if you want to meet new people.


Being from a small town means some guys’ manoeuvres are better than others. “It’s really funny,” says Champs waitress Lasha Wood. ”Some are really shy and reserved. And others are just out there.”

David Graves remembers his early 20s the same way. He and his buddies had a Friday night routine that they had down to a system. “We would drive up and down Main Street, lookin' for girls, playing the music in our cars as loud as we could without the cops bothering us,” he says. “Then we would stop at the McDonald’s parking lot and look for house parties.”

Graves grew up in Mortlach and treated the weekend trips to Moose Jaw as a rite of passage. Moose Jaw is 43 kilometres away from Mortlach and has 4,010 more people. The 2006 Census recorded 20 people between the ages of 21 and 29 living in Mortlach.

Like other villages, Mortlach is no stranger to the saying ‘everybody knows everybody.’ When asked how he and his current wife Joline met, Graves jokes “I used to date her best friend in high school.”

Justin Hanson is one of the 20 people between the ages 21 and 29 in Mortlach. Hanson is dressed in a dusty black t-shirt and worn out jeans. He holds two jobs. By day he is a roofer. At night he bounces at Jake’s Saloon. He makes the drive back and forth between Mortlach and Moose Jaw for work. It means not being able to live in the same town as his girlfriend. But he says, “It’s alright. It makes it that much better when we do see each other.”

Lately it’s becoming more common to find people in their 20s raising young families in Mortlach. Leslie Hilhoost is a young married mother raising her baby boy in the village. She chooses to stay in Mortlach because of the lifestyle it offers. “The cost of living was really enticing for us. We were paying $1,700 a month rent in Calgary,” she says. 

Mortlach draws young people because of the affordability and jobs in neighbouring communities. “It's such a progressive place,” says Hilhoost, citing the organic market and art galleries as reasons she stays.
And those looking for love can always go to Moose Jaw, where there is diversity in age and experience, so to speak. Woods says “There is such an age range here on the weekends.” Hanson agrees. “I had to throw out a 90-year-old grandma the other night,” Hansen says. “She started swingin’ so I had to.”

Jake’s Saloon will soon close to make way for a new hotel and multiplex. The multiplex may bring employment options for Hansen and other young people. And more places for farm boys to try their pickup techniques.